Friday, June 29, 2018



Guardian: 205 Feet Of Sea Level Rise By 2095!

In case you forgot for a minute that the left lives in a mindless, fact-free fantasy world, the Guardian is predicting Florida will soon be underwater. Rising seas: ‘Florida is about to be wiped off the map’

Actual data from Florida shows no change in the slow rate of sea level rise over the past century.


Sea Level Trends – NOAA Tides & Currents

The beach at Fort Lauderdale looks exactly the same as 55 years ago.

1960



2014



People on the left (including many prominent climate scientists) simply make things up, refuse to debate, lie to policymakers, and attempt to force their insanity on the rest of the world.

SOURCE 





ONLY 0.8% Of Tidal Gauges Show Sea Level Rise Near IPCC’s Alarmist Predictions!

Accurately measuring the sea level with a satellite is highly complex and fraught with uncertainty. Even the slightest equipment miscalibrations can produce inaccurate results.

For sea level rise, the figures that are often cited come from namely two sources: satellite measurement, which goes back 25 years and therefore doesn’t properly account for multidecadal variations, and tidal gauges placed along the coastlines where people actually live.

Satellite data may be overstating sea level rise

The assumed current global sea level rise from the satellite data TOPEX/Poseidon spacecraft and its successors, which began collecting data in late 1992, was reported by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to be 2.8 inches(seven centimeters).

Some experts recently warned, however — after having made adjustments to the satellite measurements — that sea level rise has accelerated and thus could increase some 75 centimeters over the century, which would be in line with projections made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2013.

Other sources say that sea level rise could be as much as 3.4 mm per year, and thus accelerating (e.g., see chart above).

Indeed, if these high-end projections were accurate, then coastal areas would be facing serious challenges. But those alarmist claims have been met critically, and at times even with derision.

There remains lots of uncertainty, and so the question today is: How much are coastal areas (where it really matters) at risk really?

Tide gauges: “most extensive, accurate and significant” datasets

One way to check what’s really going on is to examine the tide gauges along the coasts worldwide. Since the early 1800s, NOAA and its predecessor organizations have been measuring tide levels.

According to the NOAA, “This database has become one of the most extensive, accurate and significant geophysical data sets in existence.”

To do this the NOAA keeps a coastal station tide list for tracking global linear relative sea level (RSL). Manually I counted 358 stations.

A number of them stopped measurement some years ago, while others were put in operation in the 20th century. The list appears not to include the US tide gauges.

The data and charts can be looked at country-by-country here.

Less than 1% on track to meet IPCC’s 75 cm sea level rise by 2100

Examining the data to get a general idea of how the sea level is behaving at these tide stations. A number of points were observed:

1) Only three stations show an RSL rise of 7.5 mm/year or more, meaning that only three stations (0.8%) are on track to reach the IPCC’s alarmist 75 cm sea level rise projection by 2100. And if we use the more conservative 60 cm rise, only five stations (1.4%) are on track!

Only 14% show a rise equal to or greater than satellite global rate

2) Only 51 tide gauges (14%) are measuring 3.2 mm/year or more, which is approximately equivalent to about what the satellites are said to be measured globally. That figure would need to be near 50% if the satellites were true.

3) Fifty-four coastal tide gauges (15%) show that relative sea level has in fact been falling.

4) The mean relative sea level rise as to the tide gauges is about one third less than what is measured by the satellites, i.e. approx. 2.3 mm per year, or less than 10 inches per century.

This is only a rough overview. Naturally, a more detailed look recent tide gauge trends of the last two or three decades would tell us more about the accelerating sea level rise. Or maybe not: rate changes over such short time periods have more to do with natural variations.

So in general? If you’re living and working at the institutes who operate the satellites, then you might be showing concern about the figures you’re getting (it’ll help with funding, in any case).

But if you’re the average person living near the coast, then in most places there’s not much to be alarmed about. There’s a good chance the satellites are overstating sea level rise just a bit and so you can better rely on what your local tide gauge has been showing.

SOURCE 





The coldest place on Earth is even chillier than scientists thought: Temperatures plummet to -148F in 'supercold' areas of Antarctica's ice sheet

So a few degrees of atmospheric warming is supposed to melt it??</>

The coldest place on Earth is even colder than thought, a new study has found.

Researchers discovered tiny valleys near the top of Antarctica's ice sheet reach temperatures of nearly minus 100 degrees Celsius (minus 148 degrees Fahrenheit) in the winter.

The results could change scientists' understanding of just how low temperatures can get at Earth's surface, according to the researchers.

The coldest spot on Earth was found on the East Antarctic Plateau, a high snowy plateau in central Antarctica that encompasses the South Pole.

The record breaking temperatures occur occurred in small hollows 2 to 3 meters (6 to 9 feet) deep in the surface of the ice, on the southern side of high ridges on the plateau.

The record of minus 98 degrees Celsius is about as cold as it is possible to get at Earth's surface, according to the researchers.

Scientists used satellite data between 2004 and 2016 to come up with the minus 144 degrees Fahrenheit figure, as the eastern plateau of Antartica is a barren, snowy region where surface-based weather instruments aren't available .

Small low-lying dips in the Antarctic ice sheet had the most frigid temperatures, they found.

Because cold air is dense, it funnels into the dips where it may stay trapped for several days when skies are clear and winds are light.

This is similar to how cold air drains into valley locations at night elsewhere in the world.

Scientists first announced in 2013 they had found the lowest temperatures on Earth's surface in the area.

Sensors on several Earth-observing satellites measured temperatures of minus 93 degrees Celsius (minus 135 degrees Fahrenheit) in several spots on the East Antarctic Plateau, a high snowy plateau in central Antarctica that encompasses the South Pole.

But the researchers revised that initial study with new data and found the temperatures actually reach minus 98 degrees Celsius (minus 144 degrees Fahrenheit) during the southern polar night, mostly during July and August.

When the researchers first announced they had found the coldest temperatures on Earth five years ago, they determined that persistent clear skies and light winds are required for temperatures to dip this low.

The new study found not only are clear skies necessary, but the air must also be extremely dry, because water vapor traps some heat in the air.

The high elevation of the East Antarctic Plateau and its proximity to the South Pole give it the coldest climate of any region on Earth.

The lowest air temperature ever measured by a weather station, minus 89 degrees Celsius (minus 128 degrees Fahrenheit), was recorded there at Russia's Vostok Station in July 1983.

SOURCE 





UK: Nuclear sector deal signals support for 'baby' atomic power plants

Small Modular Reactors are hoped to offer a cheaper alternative to conventional nuclear power stations such as Hinkley Point

A new generation of “mini” atomic power plants in the UK will get the strongest signal yet of government support on Thursday when the industrial strategy’s nuclear sector deal is unveiled.

Business and Energy Secretary Greg Clark is due to set out £200m of funding for the industry at the nuclear-licensed Trawsfynydd site in North Wales.

While the bulk of the money is a re-announcement of support pledged last year, industry insiders say the site chosen to launch the sector deal is important.

Trawsfynydd is seen as the most likely location for a small modular reactor (SMR) – a new design of a baby nuclear plant which produces far less power than a traditional atomic plant such as Hinkley Point.

SOURCE 




Share bikes a failure in Australia

A Greenie dream dies.  Many people who hire them are too lazy to return them

Bike-sharing service oBike is staying in Sydney despite piles of the disused bicycles ending up dumped in streets and waterways across the city.

OBike is no longer in service in Melbourne after the city council started issuing fines for illegal dumping.

The company has also announced it would stop operating in its home base of Singapore.

An oBike spokesperson told the ABC it was 'not leaving Australia'. 'Our service is as usual. Meanwhile we are also working closely with local authorities in Melbourne for a detailed discussion on how we can better provide our service.'

The company's decision to withdraw from Melbourne comes after the  Environment Protection Authority announced steep new fines of $3,000 per dumped bike, payable by the business.

There are at least four bike-sharing companies in Melbourne and Sydney including oBike and ReddyGo which were launched last year after being popularly used overseas.

The heavily criticised share bike industry, which also operates in other major cities across the country, often leaves pedestrians frustrated as the bikes are left strewn across footpaths or thrown into trees.

Port Phillip Mayor Bernadene Voss told radio station 3AW she had been informed the bikes were on their way out of Melbourne.

'We've been told they are going,' she said. 'We do understand though that there is a new operator coming in.'

Melbourne Lord Mayor Sally Capp asked people to stop using the rental scheme after the company confirmed it was pulling out of Melbourne, following controversy and hefty fines over bikes dumped on streets, up trees and in waterways.

'oBikes have decided to withdraw from our market here in Melbourne and we are working very closely with them to remove oBikes from the city streets,' she told reporters.

SOURCE 

***************************************

For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  

Preserving the graphics:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here or here

*****************************************


Thursday, June 28, 2018




EPA’s Pruitt Wants to Limit His Own Agency’s Authority

The chief of the Environmental Protection Agency is trying to limit one of the agency’s most powerful tools to manage or block mining, real-estate and other developments by removing the effective veto power it has over permits to dump waste into waterways.

The move, described in a memo reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, would limit the agency’s power to pre-emptively or retroactively block U.S. Army Corps of Engineers approval of the waste dumping, hindering or potentially killing large development projects.

It is the latest attempt at a regulatory rollback from EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, who has pledged to ease environmental restrictions on businesses. He wrote in the memo to some senior staff, including regional administrators, that the powers he intends to curb have a chilling effect on economic development.

“I am concerned that the mere potential of EPA’s use of its… authority before or after the permitting process could influence investment decisions and chill economic growth by short-circuiting the permitting process,” he wrote in a four-page memo he signed Tuesday.

Mr. Pruitt is ordering EPA’s Office of Water to relinquish authority the agency has had for about 40 years under the Clean Water Act of 1972 to prohibit some approvals by the Corps even before a developer formally applies for them, or to throw them out years after they were granted—even after a project is complete and operational.

The Corps has permitting authority when developers want to dump excavated land and waste into waterways, most commonly sought for mines and real-estate development, experts said. But Congress granted EPA the review authority over that permitting and power to reject permits approved by the Corps. While advocates see it as a fail-safe the agency can leverage to encourage developers into more environmentally friendly practices, Mr. Pruitt thinks the power is so broad it is vulnerable to abuse, according to a person familiar with his thinking.

The agency has used that authority to block or restrict development only 13 times in its history, according to the memo, so shedding the authority would be broadly less influential than Mr. Pruitt’s headline initiatives like rollbacks on power-plant pollution rules, vehicle-emissions limits, and EPA’s power over streams and lakes.

But while few projects have been subject to that authority, it is one of the most extensive the agency has, with its potential to halt a project at preliminary stages in the permitting process or long after it has come to fruition, according to several policy experts.

The developers of Pebble Mine—an estimated $5 billion project in southwest Alaska—blame President Barack Obama’s administration for putting their project in regulatory limbo by using these powers against it in 2014. Mr. Pruitt refers to that decision specifically in the memo, which could erase the threat that the EPA could halt the project again after Pebble makes another effort to get federal permits, Tom Collier, chief executive of Pebble Limited Partnership, said in a phone interview from his Anchorage office.

Shares of the partnership’s parent company, Vancouver-based Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd. , have lost about 60% since that decision and closed Tuesday on the Toronto Stock Exchange at C$0.68. Northern Dynasty has also had trouble recruiting investors since then. Last month it said First Quantum Minerals Ltd. backed out of a deal announced in December to pay $150 million for an option to buy half of the project for $1.5 billion.

Pebble executives have urged Congress and officials in President Donald Trump’s administration to shed this authority, Mr. Collier said.

“It’s hugely helpful for us,” he added. “I think it sends a clear signal that making decisions about vetoing a project before you have had an application filed… is just not the right policy.”

Dropping the policy would eliminate a useful tool the EPA has to encourage developers to look harder for solutions that are friendly to the environment, said Bob Perciasepe, deputy EPA administrator under Mr. Obama and chief of the EPA’s air and water divisions during the Clinton administration.

The EPA’s rare use of the authority shows it has been reserved for special situations and not prone to abuse, he said.

It “could be self-defeating over time” for EPA to drop it, he said.

“If there isn’t a consequence to filling a wetland and destroying a habitat, then people will do it,” he said.

Mr. Pruitt’s memo directs EPA staff to send a draft policy to the White House for review within six months. The new policy would need to go through a public comment period before it is finalized, according to a person familiar with the process.

SOURCE




What Warming? Blooming Date For Trees In Beijing The Same As 1741-1795 AD

China is a big place so what happens there is significant

The day of the year that a plant first blooms is widely considered to be “an important natural indicator of climate change” when observed over the course of decades to centuries.

A new study (Liu et al., 2018) reveals that a flowering plant in Beijing, the Amygdalus davidiana, has not been blooming any earlier in recent decades than it did during the second half of the 18th century.

The scientific literature is teeming with temperature reconstructions that depict a glaring lack of unprecedented, remarkable, or even detectable warming at sites all across the globe.  Hundreds of non-warming/non-hockey stick graphs have been published just since 2017 alone.

And when it comes to temperature reconstructions, one geographical region has seemed to receive more attention than any other: China.

Reconstructions of regional China temperatures consistently do not support the position that the modern period falls outside the range of natural variability.

In fact, in the first half of 2018 alone, there have already been 17 scientific papers published documenting a lack of conspicuous modern warming for regional China.

Unlike other temperature proxies used to reconstruct past temperatures, the day of the year a plant or tree blooms can be directly connected to the regional temperature.

Cooler temperatures translate to delayed bloom dates, and warmer temperatures indicate earlier bloom dates.

Compiled over decades to centuries, records of blooming dates can clearly depict long-term climate trends, as demonstrated in Liu and Fang (2017):

In a new study, Liu et al. (2018) obtained records of blooming dates for flowering trees in Beijing during the 260 years between 1741 and 2000.  Consistent with many other recent paleoclimate reconstructions for the region,

Liu et al. (2018) did not assess any significant differences between the first blooming dates in the second half of the 18th century (1741-1795) compared to the late 20th century (1963-2000).

In fact, even when including the delayed blooming dates (shown above) during the 1796-1832 period (attributed to that colder period’s higher volcanic activity and lower solar irradiance), the average day-of-year first blooming dates during the 90 years between 1741-1832 were effectively identical to the day-of-year first blooming dates for 1963-2000 (85.2 vs. 84.4).

As mentioned above, an abundance of proxy reconstructions from the region also show the modern period is no warmer — and even several degrees colder — than it has been for the last several centuries to millennia.

Therefore, it appears to be widely accepted in the scientific literature that China has not been impacted by dangerous or unprecedented “global” warming since the 18th century, or since CO2 concentrations began rising precipitously.

SOURCE





Cooler Heads Need To Prevail On Texas Climate Predictions

For ll its positive attributes, the great state of Texas has one major failing: the inability of its mainstream media to rationally discuss climate change.

Unfortunately, Texas media are being used to implement the shock doctrine approach to environmental policy.

Back in 2014, one of us (S.R.) discussed this topic specifically in the context of the severe drought that was underway in North Texas. Readers may remember that at the time, Wichita Falls was ground zero for the drought, and its municipal drinking water reservoirs were being drawn down.  Residents were understandably concerned.

However, what emerged during this drought was some potentially problematic policy advice from the George W. Bush Institute in Dallas.  As S.R. wrote in response at the time:

"The point of all this data is that we need to be cautious with precipitation and drought statistics in Texas.  Anecdotal writing is more popular in the media today than ever.  Sometimes this writing style can be useful, but very often it distorts reality by over-generalizing from an isolated case, in shock doctrine style[.] …

The worst drought conditions in the state from a couple years ago are easing. Although east Texas is almost out of drought, everywhere else is still in a significant drought – but if trends continue, the pressure may lift over the next couple years.  Now simply isn’t the time to create comprehensive and far-reaching water policy in shock doctrine style.

Following the advice of Rahm Emanuel to “never let a good crisis go to waste” will not lead Texas in the direction it needs to go, particularly when I see statements by the George W. Bush Institute such as “the trick is finding the right balance between planning and property rights.”

Discussions over property rights are never best conducted when a crisis is at hand.  Wait until the drought crisis settles down – which it undoubtedly will – and then begin examining proposals over this very contentious topic (especially in Texas, where property rights issues are taken more seriously than almost anywhere else)[.] …

Patience is needed in the Lone Star State on water policy.  Avoid the shock doctrine".

And sure enough, our recommendation for patience paid off. Within one year of our article being published, the reservoirs in Wichita Falls were already back up to effectively 100% of capacity, a point they have maintained ever since.

This brings us to a recent article in the Dallas Morning News predicting that “[c]limate change [is] to bring North Texas longer droughts, heavy rains, 120-degree temps within 25 years.”  And in this report, we find the following claims:

“Climate change is not just about polar bears,” said Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University with an impressive YouTube following.  “It will affect North Texas profoundly.”

Between 2041 and 2050, Dallas-Fort Worth may see August temperatures rise from a mean of 86 degrees Fahrenheit at the end of the 20th century to 94 degrees, with extremes rising above 120, reports one study by scientists at the University of Texas at Arlington"

That’s a bold prediction.  Our concern with it is that there appears to be no evidence that extreme maximum temperatures in the Dallas-Fort Worth region for August will rise above 120 degrees by the 2041-2050 period.

Using historical data from NOAA going back to 1899 for the area, there is only a very weak time trend in the data, as can be seen in this graph.  In fact, the highest all-time August maximum temperatures occurred in 1909 and 1936 at 112 degrees.

Since this latter date, the region has hit 110 degrees only twice (in 1943 and 2011), and the average maximum high over the past three decades (104.0 degrees) is essentially the same as the average maximum high for the entire period since records began in 1899 (103.3 degrees).

Consequently, Dallas-Fort Worth “may see” extreme August temperatures in the 120-plus range by the 2040s, but if the 120 years of data for the region is any indication, this appears unlikely and not a rational basis for funding public policy.

Similarly, the prediction that August temperatures may rise from a mean of 86 degrees in the late 1990s up to 94 degrees by 2040 appears unlikely if historical trends since the 19th century are any indication.

There is a modest increasing trend in August temperatures for Dallas-Fort Worth since the late 19th century, but nowhere near dramatic enough to suggest that a rapid increase of 8 degrees will take place during the next 25 or so years.

For example, over the 120 years between 1899 and 2018, the average August temperature in this region of North Texas rose just 2 degrees from 84 to 86 degrees Fahrenheit.

If the historical trend continues, perhaps an increase to 87 degrees by 2050 will occur, or if the upper 95% confidence interval of the historical trend is extrapolated out to mid-century, maybe 88 degrees.

These slightly higher values are very different from a prediction that residents of Dallas-Fort Worth should prepare for an average August temperature of 94 degrees during the 2040s.

Drought is always an issue that ranchers are concerned about in North Texas, but more caution is warranted when considering the following predictions:

Along with heat will come stronger drought, which “has profound economic impacts,” said Hayhoe.

The prediction that North Texas will have longer and more severe droughts is based on multiple factors, including the relationship between high temperatures and soil dryness and the presence of more frequent and longer lasting high-pressure systems in summer that suppress rainfall and deflect storms away from our area.

Hayhoe points to Texas’ 2010-2013 drought as a probable sign of things to come.

Quite the contrary.  In none of the four climate divisions that make up the northern half of Texas have there been any statistically significant trends toward increasing drought since records began in 1895 (see graphs for climate divisions 1, 2, 3, and 4; positive values [green bars] represent increasingly wet conditions, while negative values [yellow bars] indicate increasing drought).

In fact, in divisions 2, 3, and 4 (the north-central and north-east regions of Texas), on the balance of probabilities, historical trends suggest less drought in the future, not more.

Climate predictions are hard, and the record in Texas has not been promising of late.

In a time of scarce public resources and more pressing, and demonstrably real, national security concerns – such as the border crisis – policy-makers in Texas need to consider a more balanced examination of climate change impacts on the state and avoid deploying limited funds and enacting unwise policies in an attempt to ward off projections that hold a significant chance of not coming true.

One way of decreasing pressure on Texas’s water resources would be to halt and reduce the massive influx of illegal immigrants into the state, whose “official” numbers increased by an order of magnitude to nearly 5 million between 1970 and 2014.

The actual number of illegal aliens in Texas is likely much higher and increasing more rapidly than official statistics suggest.  Curbing this population increase alone would go a long way to dealing with many of the issues raised in the Dallas Morning News article.

SOURCE





Judge throws out SF and Oakland climate suits against big oil

A federal judge Monday tossed out two groundbreaking lawsuits by San Francisco and Oakland that sought to hold some of the world’s largest oil companies liable for climate change.

In an exhaustive, 16-page ruling that touched on such scientific matters as the ice age and early observations of carbon dioxide, U.S. District Judge William Alsup acknowledged the problem of a warming planet but said it is just too big for the courts to solve.

The cities are trying to get five oil and gas giants, including Bay Area-based Chevron, to help cover the costs of dealing with sea-level rise, like picking up the tab for seawalls. However, Alsup, noting that Congress and the White House, not the judiciary, are responsible for addressing the fallout from fossil fuels, granted the industry’s request to dismiss the suits.

“The problem deserves a solution on a more vast scale than can be supplied by a district judge or jury in a public nuisance case,” he wrote.

"The two cases are among the first of many nationwide that have recently attempted to force the oil industry to pay for what might amount to hundreds of billions of dollars to combat climate change. While the other municipalities, including a handful in California as well as New York City and Kings County, Wash., are closely following what happens in the Bay Area, Monday’s decision does not affect the cases in other courts."

The cities and counties all claim that oil companies have long known that greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels are warming the planet. Yet, according to the suits, the industry did nothing to prevent problems and even sought to cover up its ties to the climate, akin to how big tobacco tried to deceive the public about the health impacts of cigarettes decades ago.

The lawsuits argue that like tobacco companies, the oil firms create a public nuisance and should be held accountable. San Francisco alone estimates that rising seas at the hands of climate change has put $10 billion of public property and as much as $39 billion of private land at risk.

But Alsup, who works in the court’s Northern District of California, opined that the world has undoubtedly benefited from fossil fuels, from the industrial revolution to today’s modern conveniences. The bench, he determined, was not in a position to weigh the industry’s positives against the negative.

“Having reaped the benefit of that historic progress, would it really be fair to now ignore our own responsibility in the use of fossil fuels and place the blame for global warming on those who supplied what we demanded?” he wrote. “Is it really fair, in light of those benefits, to say that the sale of fossil fuels was unreasonable?”

Alsup tried to grapple with such questions at a first-of-its-kind climate “tutorial” in March. He invited experts from both sides of the case to weigh in on the science of climate change. The hearing was so popular that it had to be live-streamed to an additional courtroom.

In the end, Alsup determined that the nation’s environmental agencies should be tapped for their expertise on the subject and that the legislative and executive branches of government should have final say.

Attorneys for San Francisco and Oakland are reviewing their options and are not yet ready to concede defeat.

“Our belief remains that these companies are liable for the harm they’ve caused,” said John Coté, spokesman for the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office. “This is obviously not the ruling we wanted, but this doesn’t mean the case is over.”

Besides Chevron, the targets of the lawsuits were BP, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil and Shell.

The National Association of Manufacturers, which represents the interests of the oil industry, praised Alsup’s action.

“From the moment these baseless lawsuits were filed, we have argued that the courtroom was not the proper venue to address this global challenge,” said the association’s president and CEO, Jay Timmons.

Attorneys for the oil companies have long maintained that greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels are regulated under the Clean Air Act and remain the purview of lawmakers and the president.

While the San Francisco and Oakland cases are the first of the recent climate suits to get a decision, the others are in different courts, both at the state and federal level, and could elicit different judgments.

San Mateo and Marin counties are both trying to get climate suits heard in California court, where public nuisance cases are generally easier to make.

San Francisco and Oakland had initially tried to make their cases in state court, but Alsup determined that because of the scope of the matter, the issue belonged to the federal judiciary.


SOURCE





'It's less efficient than regular unleaded': Australian motorists are being forced to use E10 fuel despite growing doubts about cost savings and environmental benefits

Motorists are being forced to use ethanol petrol despite industry doubts about its environmental benefits and cost savings.

Service stations in New South Wales and Queensland are being required to stock E10 petrol, which contains up to 10 per cent ethanol, and are hit with hefty fines if they fail to convert their tanks.

This lower octane unleaded blend, containing fermented sugarcane or grain, typically sells for $1.50 a litre in Sydney, compared with $1.75 a litre for premium unleaded.

Over a year, this equates to an extra $663 a year to fill up a small Mazda3 hatchback if motorists want to buy the superior premium unleaded petrol as lower octane, regular unleaded is replaced with E10 at service stations.

E10 is also three per cent less efficient per kilometre than regular unleaded petrol, with industry experts questioning its touted environmental benefits.

Independent petrol monitoring group Fueltrac said lobbying from ethanol producer Manildra and Queensland's sugarcane growers was forcing motorists in two states to pay significantly more for petrol if they didn't want to fill up with E10.

'There would be zero benefit in terms of environmental benefit and you've got the higher cost of the fuel,' the group's manager director Geoff Trotter told Daily Mail Australia today.

'The stuff only has 70 per cent thermal efficiency of a standard unleaded so you've got to use three per cent more to go the same distance.'

Mr Trotter, a former Shell executive, said the NSW government was threatening service stations with $500,000 fines if they didn't stock E10.

'When the motorists didn't respond to the mandate in the first tranche, they then threatened retailers with these huge fines,' he said.

'Unfortunately, what that's done is it's forced people to have to buy premium unleaded fuel which is between 15 and 20 cents a litre more than the previous standard unleaded. 'They haven't delivered any savings benefits for the poor old motorist.'

SOURCE

***************************************

For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  

Preserving the graphics:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here or here

*****************************************



Wednesday, June 27, 2018



Three Climate Change Questions Answered

A claimed nearly unanimous scientific consensus on fear of climate change has caused a push to substantially reduce or even eliminate the use of fossil fuel in favor of solar and wind.  But three crucial questions are: 1) is the scientific community really united?, 2) can solar and wind take over any time soon to provide the required vital energy for the maintenance of modern civilization in today's world of 7 billion people?, and 3) has CO2 caused any harm yet?  The answer to all three questions is no.

A major theme of this essay is that many assertions can easily be checked out by a simple Google search.

One of the most persistent false impressions, which the mainstream media have ingrained in us, is that 97% of scientists agree that CO2 is indeed doing irreparable harm.  However, this figure was obtained not by a respected, impartial polling organization, but by believers for their own purposes.

Exactly what do the 97% agree on?  Had the question been "Do you believe that the Earth's climate is changing, and does mankind have an effect on the climate?," the response would not have been 97%, but 100%.  But had the question been "Is burning fossil fuel such a threat that there should be a major effort to stop?," who knows?  Probably less than 50%.  That question was never asked on a large-scale survey, done by a respected polling organization and documented in a place easily available to the public.

To get an idea of how divided the scientific community is, a petition was circulated, led by Friedrich Seitz, the president of the National Academy of Sciences, disputing the ill effects of CO2.  It garnered 32,000 signatures, over 9,000 by Ph.D. scientists.  To justify the 97%, there would have to be another opposing petition signed by a million scientists.

Still not convinced? Consider this excerpt from Steven Koonin, director of the Institute for Urban Studies at NYU, in the Wall Street Journal, April 17, 2017:

The public is largely unaware of the intense debates within climate science.  At a recent national laboratory meeting, I observed more than 100 active government and university researchers challenge one another as they strove to separate human impacts from the climate's natural variability.  At issue were not nuances but fundamental aspects of our understanding, such as the apparent – and unexpected – slowing of global sea level rise over the past two decades.

Judging by Koonin's particular experience, the number would be around 50%.  So much for the 97%!

Despite the lack of consensus, there is a push by various organizations like the Sierra Club and 350.org, and Al Gore, to end the use of fossil fuel.  The Sierra Club website states, "We are ready for 100% clean energy," apparently wrongly believing that solar and wind can replace fossil fuel.  But in 1998, about 86% of world energy was from fossil fuel, 9%, nuclear, and solar and wind round off to the nearest integer down to 0%.  Google "graph % of world power from solar and wind."

In 2017, after 20 years and hundreds of billions spent to develop and promote solar and wind – around $150B in the USA alone (Google "GAO budget for climate change"; the numbers are 85%, 5%, and rounds off up to 1%).  Clearly, solar and wind will be unable to supplant fossil fuel any time soon.  But think of what an 85% decrease in energy would mean for your lifestyle: cars, air-conditioning, high-tech medicine, air travel, most electricity, many manufactured goods.  All gone, except for society's grand pooh-bahs.

The simple truth is that the world will not voluntarily end the use of fossil fuel until another energy source, most likely nuclear, becomes available at about the same quantity and price.  Rapidly developing countries such as China, India, Mexico, Indonesia, and Nigeria understand this ironclad relationship between prosperity and fossil fuel use, even if we in the richer parts of the world have forgotten it.  They will not stop using fossil fuel because the Sierra club lectures them to switch to solar and wind so as to save the planet.  In fact, before fossil fuel was widely used, civilization was a thin veneer on a human base of poverty and squalor, a veneer supplied by colonies, slavery, and the like.  Is this what we want?

Regarding harm CO2 may have done, there is a simple check.  (1) Whenever a believer says such and such is happening, check it out with a Google search.  For instance, say the claim is that sea levels are rising rapidly, as many definitively asserted when the Paris climate agreement was being negotiated.  Simply Google "graph of sea level rise."  A variety of graphs will pop up, all showing a persistent rise of between 20 and 30 cm per century, with no increase around 1950 as CO2 levels started to increase.

Say the claim is that ice in Antarctica is rapidly melting. Google "NASA Antarctica ice."  It will show that ice is rapidly melting in some regions – for instance, near the Antarctic Peninsula.  This provides dramatic pictures for the evening news.  However, over the entire huge continent, the most recent NASA measurements of total ice show that ice is not melting, but forming – about 80 billion tons per year.

With an internet search, anyone can check out such assertions of gloom and doom, anywhere, anytime; virtually none stands up to serious scrutiny (1).  In fact, it is amazing that the mainstream media have never performed these simple checks.  This author is convinced that such journalistic irresponsibility will ultimately harm the media's credibility for decades to come.

It is much more likely that CO2 has been beneficial.  It is not a pollutant, but an important nutrient for plants; without atmospheric CO2, life on Earth would not be possible (2).  In fact, recent NASA measurements show that over the past 40 or so years of satellite measurements, the earth has been "greening."  To see this, Google "NASA measurements of Earth's greening."

So should we be on a breakneck race to replace fossil fuel with solar and wind?  Considering that the scientific community is, in reality, divided; the harm to civilization would be catastrophic should solar and wind fail, as they have up to this point; and that up to now, there has been little if any harm to the environment from burning fossil fuel, this author's answer is no.

SOURCE 






Energy Independence Day: A Story of Shale and Sand

People over 50 remember the OPEC oil embargoes and Americans waiting in line to buy gasoline. We were the most powerful nation the world. We had won World War II, rebuilt Europe and Japan. Yet, here we were begging some faceless Middle Eastern Sheiks for a few gallons so we could get to work. It was both frustrating and humiliating.

The answers we got from our political leadership were pathetic. Yes, they authorized farmers to start making ethanol and gave tax credits to the big refineries to get them to blend it. Congress created a Department of Energy to look for new sources of energy. They came up with some interesting ideas, but most of them were far too expensive. Americans were told to slow down, dial back on the thermostat and buy more sweaters. In short, the days of affordable energy were over and we would just have to get used to it.

Adding insult to injury, we were told that it was our fault.

Without much help from the Department of Energy, some enterprising entrepreneurs began to explore the possibilities of unlocking enormous amounts of oil and gas trapped in shale formations deep in the earth. To accomplish this they would combine new technologies. The first involved vertically drilling up to a mile deep to reach the layer of shale. They next figured out how to turn the drill bits to drill horizontally into the shale formation. No small feat. The second was perfecting a somewhat proven process called hydraulic fracturing. By pumping water down the well at very high pressure, they could create tiny cracks in the shale allowing the oil and gas to be tapped. A key was to include sand with the water to hold those tiny fissures open when the water was pumped out. Not just any sand. It had to be extremely hard to withstand the enormous pressures. It also had to be spherical, unlike beach sand which is cubicle.  Rounded sand prevents plugging up the plumbing. Fortunately, the United States has some very large shale formations and significant reserves of that special sand.

At first our OPEC puppet masters, ignored this shale and sand revolution. But, a few years ago they began to take notice of the dramatic improvements in fracking technology. They also noticed the steady increase in U.S. domestic energy production. At the rate we were going, in a few years we might not need to buy their oil. They began to try to undercut American frackers in an attempt to bankrupt them. They opened their spigots and drove down the world price of oil. They also underwrote anti-fracking public relations efforts. The combination slowed growth, rig counts dropped but our production continued to climb.

It was a war. OPEC believed they could hold their breath longer than American frackers. They were wrong. I suspect that they were shocked to learn that efficient frackers in North Dakota and West Texas could make money on oil at less than $50 a barrel. Many of the OPEC members needed more than that to keep their governments afloat. It was a war that they could not win.

So, after two years of waging war on American fracking, on September 29, 2016 (Energy Independence Day) the once powerful international oil cartel surrendered. Although they didn’t announce it that way, it was on that day that OPEC decided to begin reducing their production, ceding market share to frackers. Oil prices began to rise. Their ability to dictate to the United States would be forever diminished. We will soon be energy independent. Congress changed the law and we began to export oil and gas again to eager buyers like China.

The frackers won the energy war. But, in a larger sense the war was won with good old American ingenuity. It was won with simple, basic things. As basic as shale and sand.

SOURCE 





Sound (and light) reasons to tilt at windmills

Two simple words were enough to put me firmly in the anti-turbine camp: shadow flicker. How innocent — even poetic — it sounds, until you bear witness. If you haven’t and are undecided, I urge you to go online and find a video. It’s not hard.

It’s not exactly a trade secret that a tall object planted between you and the sun is going to cast a shadow. To provide a sense of scale, Jim Feasel, in a recent letter to the editor, has memorably written of St. Joseph’s Church with the steeple as a fan blade. As I’m in the UK, I’d change that to Big Ben, though it’s bigger than that. So we’re talking major flicker.

If you haven’t gone online to see one of those videos yet, just start blinking your eyes as you’re reading this. Now keep blinking them, slowly and regularly, until it gets annoying. Doesn’t take long, does it?

Or wait until it’s dark, sit yourself comfortably down, and ask a less-than-loved-one to flip the light switch on and off all evening.

Or imagine you live in a fridge and someone keeps opening the door. This scenario hits particularly close to home, as growing up, it drove my dad crazy when I kept doing that to check if the food was still there.

I don’t think any of these illustrations quite capture the torture of what it must be like to have to put up with shadow flicker hour after hour, day after day. Curtains don’t help. Nothing helps, except fleeing to a windowless bunker. The only relief comes when the sun god Ra shifts the running shadow over your enemies, or you manage to sell your house to someone who remembers and loves disco.

There are also noise issues (search “wind turbine sound” on YouTube, or sit under a flight path near a busy airport for an approximation); safety issues, including the thrilling prospect of ice flung at great velocity; politicians-steamrolling-the-locals issues; a lot of birds and bats that are going to have an unhappy ending; and real questions about just how beneficial these things are going to be once you have a look at the numbers.

“Is it worth putting our neighbors in this position for $65?” asked the author of that letter I mentioned. “We should not do it for all the money in the world, much less $65. Shame on all of us if we do.”

Yes, the planet would appreciate more green energy. But such projects often seem more motivated by greenbacks in the right pockets than high ideals.

If I had any say in the matter I’d only put these less than benign giants in the back yards of anybody in a position to approve them or profit handsomely from them. Naturally, the biggest wind farm of all would be placed in a ring around Washington, D.C., so the rest of the country could bask in the bloviated megawatts thus generated.

SOURCE 






A Different War of Attrition

Steve Hayward’s recent Wall Street Journal opinion piece provides an important reminder of the life cycle of advocacy driven environmental issues and the importance of persistent, fact-based resistance to counter campaigns based on ideology and visions of impending catastrophes.

Going back to the 1960s, we have witnessed an unending series of apocalyptic threats created by ideologues who have tried to use them promote increased political control by entitled elites. In all cases running from the population bomb to the limits of growth, to the war on pesticides, and climate change over the last 30 years, the problem has always been activities promoting economic growth and the solution has always been a reduction in personal freedom, serious constraints on market-based progress, and increased control from the center. Federalism and the Constitutional based limited government are treated as quaint ideals that have long outlived their relevance.

Steve Hayward takes us through the five stages that climate change has passed through to go from the “center of public concern …into a prolonged limbo.” He bases his narrative on a 1972 article by Anthony Downs, Up and Down With Ecology.

The stated objectives of climate advocates have been to eliminate fossil fuels from the globe’s energy budget, to bring atmospheric CO2 levels down to pre-industrial levels, to promote wind and solar as substitutes for fossil fuels and reduce the carbon foot print of all. All of these objectives are championed as necessary to save the planet. The real objective has been increased political control of the economy by self-ordained elites. We should not forget that in the early 2000s, French President Jacque Chirac called for a world government. And, Christiana Figueres, the former Executive Secretary of UNFCCC, prior to the 2015 meeting in Paris bluntly stated “This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the industrial revolution. “

While some ideologues may have entertained the notion that decarbonization objectives could be achieved in a matter of a few decades, no one who understood how the world works could seriously believe that. Instead, advocate leaders championed lofty and unattainable goals recognizing that incremental progress was the real objective. And since the time of Kyoto, they have promoted actions that incrementally would reduce the role of carbon in the global economy. But over time the costs of forced decarbonization have become more apparent and as they have counter pressures has increased. Germany, the leading advocate for alternative energy, is rolling back its Energiewende in the face of growing emissions and costs and the US is undoing much of the Obama initiatives. Other nations, as evidenced by the Paris Accord, have moved from supporting binding targets and timetables to accepting a voluntary agreement that will be honored in the breach while they pursue economic growth and higher standards of living..

There are two major reasons why the march to global government and rapid decarbonization have stalled. First, the public has never ranked climate change as one of its top priorities. Nor has there been any indication that the public at large is willing to sacrifice the benefits that come from continued economic progress. Second, while those opposed to draconian climate change actions are relatively small in number and underfunded, they have been well focused and persistent in pointing out the flaws in the climate orthodoxy and the folly of mandated decarbonization. Climate advocates have imposed significant cost from their actions and policies but those costs are far less than they could have been. And, as Steve Hayward insightfully observed, “Treating climate change as planet scale problem that could be solved by an international regulatory scheme transformed the issue into a political creed for committed believers. Causes that live by politics, die by politics.”

SOURCE 





Being ‘green’ is easy, ignore facts

If you thought the “green movement” was more about self-righteous politics than clear-headed science, here are two tales that prove the point.

In Arizona a petition is being circulated in an effort to get on the ballot an initiative called the Clean Energy for a Healthy Arizona Amendment. This would require 50 percent of the electricity generated in the state to come from renewable sources by 2030.

The petition states: “The Amendment defines renewable energy sources to include solar, wind, small-scale hydropower, and other sources that are replaced rapidly by a natural, ongoing process (excluding nuclear or fossil fuel). Distributed renewable energy sources, like rooftop solar, must comprise at least 10% of utilities’ annual retail sales of electricity by 2030.”

To get on the November ballot petitioners must gather nearly 226,000 signatures by July 5.

If the measure passes it would necessitate the closure of the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station west of Phoenix, which currently provides about 35 percent of the state’s electricity, even though it produces no carbon emissions.

If the state were to achieve the goal of 50 percent of its power coming from mostly solar and wind, both of which are intermittent, there would be no room on the grid for Palo Verde’s power, because reactors can’t be quickly turned off and on — it takes weeks of preparation.

“We would have to shut Palo Verde down during the day every day,” one plant official was quoted as saying by Cronkite News. “But that’s not how nuclear plants really work. Nuclear plants can’t just be shut down and then started up again.”

The most likely source of rapid start-up generation would be natural gas, which produces carbon emissions, especially when frequently idling.

Adding wind and solar to the power grid could increase the carbon dioxide output.

Retired electrical engineer Kent Hawkins wrote in February 2010 that “the introduction of wind power into an electricity system increases the fossil fuel consumption and CO2 emissions beyond levels that would have occurred using efficient gas plants alone as the providers of electricity equivalent to the firmed wind.”

This is because every kilowatt-hour of intermittent electricity introduced into the grid must be backed up by a reliable fossil-fuel generator. When the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine, the demand for electricity remains.

Starting and stopping natural gas-fired generators is inefficient, comparable to operating a car in stop and go traffic instead of steady and efficient on the open highway. Just like the car, the fuel consumption can double, along with the carbon emissions, negating any presumed carbon savings by using solar or wind.

Opponents of the measure say it will drive up power bills in the state. Proponents argue long-term benefits of solar power and reducing nuclear waste offset any immediate cost spike.

Meanwhile, in New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has announced plans to build $6 billion worth of offshore wind turbines while shutting down the nuclear-powered, emission-free Indian Point Energy Center in Buchanan, N.Y.

Robert Bryce, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, explained in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal that the wind turbines will produce only 60 percent as much power as the nuclear plant being closed.

How will this gap be covered? You guessed it, natural gas.

“The irony here is colossal. Mr. Cuomo, who banned hydraulic fracturing despite the economic boon it has created in neighboring Pennsylvania, and who has repeatedly blocked construction of pipelines, is making New York even more dependent on natural gas, which will increase its carbon emissions,” Bryce writes. “At the same time, he has mandated offshore wind projects that will force New Yorkers to pay more for their electricity, even though the state already has some of the nation’s highest electricity prices.”

This past week NV Energy announced plans to contract to build six new solar power projects at a cost of $2 billion and double the state’s renewable energy capacity, but only if voters reject the Energy Choice Initiative on the November ballot that would end the company’s monopoly in most of the state and allow competition. No mention was made of how this might impact power bills.

In all three states emissions would likely increase, as well as power bills.

Being green is a state of mind. Just never let the facts get in the way.

SOURCE 

***************************************

For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  

Preserving the graphics:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here or here

*****************************************


Tuesday, June 26, 2018



Three Climate Change Questions Answered

A claimed nearly unanimous scientific consensus on fear of climate change has caused a push to substantially reduce or even eliminate the use of fossil fuel in favor of solar and wind.  But three crucial questions are: 1) is the scientific community really united?, 2) can solar and wind take over any time soon to provide the required vital energy for the maintenance of modern civilization in today's world of 7 billion people?, and 3) has CO2 caused any harm yet?  The answer to all three questions is no.

A major theme of this essay is that many assertions can easily be checked out by a simple Google search.

One of the most persistent false impressions, which the mainstream media have ingrained in us, is that 97% of scientists agree that CO2 is indeed doing irreparable harm.  However, this figure was obtained not by a respected, impartial polling organization, but by believers for their own purposes.

Exactly what do the 97% agree on?  Had the question been "Do you believe that the Earth's climate is changing, and does mankind have an effect on the climate?," the response would not have been 97%, but 100%.  But had the question been "Is burning fossil fuel such a threat that there should be a major effort to stop?," who knows?  Probably less than 50%.  That question was never asked on a large-scale survey, done by a respected polling organization and documented in a place easily available to the public.

To get an idea of how divided the scientific community is, a petition was circulated, led by Friedrich Seitz, the president of the National Academy of Sciences, disputing the ill effects of CO2.  It garnered 32,000 signatures, over 9,000 by Ph.D. scientists.  To justify the 97%, there would have to be another opposing petition signed by a million scientists.

Still not convinced? Consider this excerpt from Steven Koonin, director of the Institute for Urban Studies at NYU, in the Wall Street Journal, April 17, 2017:

The public is largely unaware of the intense debates within climate science.  At a recent national laboratory meeting, I observed more than 100 active government and university researchers challenge one another as they strove to separate human impacts from the climate's natural variability.  At issue were not nuances but fundamental aspects of our understanding, such as the apparent – and unexpected – slowing of global sea level rise over the past two decades.

Judging by Koonin's particular experience, the number would be around 50%.  So much for the 97%!

Despite the lack of consensus, there is a push by various organizations like the Sierra Club and 350.org, and Al Gore, to end the use of fossil fuel.  The Sierra Club website states, "We are ready for 100% clean energy," apparently wrongly believing that solar and wind can replace fossil fuel.  But in 1998, about 86% of world energy was from fossil fuel, 9%, nuclear, and solar and wind round off to the nearest integer down to 0%.  Google "graph % of world power from solar and wind."

In 2017, after 20 years and hundreds of billions spent to develop and promote solar and wind – around $150B in the USA alone (Google "GAO budget for climate change"; the numbers are 85%, 5%, and rounds off up to 1%).  Clearly, solar and wind will be unable to supplant fossil fuel any time soon.  But think of what an 85% decrease in energy would mean for your lifestyle: cars, air-conditioning, high-tech medicine, air travel, most electricity, many manufactured goods.  All gone, except for society's grand pooh-bahs.

The simple truth is that the world will not voluntarily end the use of fossil fuel until another energy source, most likely nuclear, becomes available at about the same quantity and price.  Rapidly developing countries such as China, India, Mexico, Indonesia, and Nigeria understand this ironclad relationship between prosperity and fossil fuel use, even if we in the richer parts of the world have forgotten it.  They will not stop using fossil fuel because the Sierra club lectures them to switch to solar and wind so as to save the planet.  In fact, before fossil fuel was widely used, civilization was a thin veneer on a human base of poverty and squalor, a veneer supplied by colonies, slavery, and the like.  Is this what we want?

Regarding harm CO2 may have done, there is a simple check.  (1) Whenever a believer says such and such is happening, check it out with a Google search.  For instance, say the claim is that sea levels are rising rapidly, as many definitively asserted when the Paris climate agreement was being negotiated.  Simply Google "graph of sea level rise."  A variety of graphs will pop up, all showing a persistent rise of between 20 and 30 cm per century, with no increase around 1950 as CO2 levels started to increase.

Say the claim is that ice in Antarctica is rapidly melting. Google "NASA Antarctica ice."  It will show that ice is rapidly melting in some regions – for instance, near the Antarctic Peninsula.  This provides dramatic pictures for the evening news.  However, over the entire huge continent, the most recent NASA measurements of total ice show that ice is not melting, but forming – about 80 billion tons per year.

With an internet search, anyone can check out such assertions of gloom and doom, anywhere, anytime; virtually none stands up to serious scrutiny (1).  In fact, it is amazing that the mainstream media have never performed these simple checks.  This author is convinced that such journalistic irresponsibility will ultimately harm the media's credibility for decades to come.

It is much more likely that CO2 has been beneficial.  It is not a pollutant, but an important nutrient for plants; without atmospheric CO2, life on Earth would not be possible (2).  In fact, recent NASA measurements show that over the past 40 or so years of satellite measurements, the earth has been "greening."  To see this, Google "NASA measurements of Earth's greening."

So should we be on a breakneck race to replace fossil fuel with solar and wind?  Considering that the scientific community is, in reality, divided; the harm to civilization would be catastrophic should solar and wind fail, as they have up to this point; and that up to now, there has been little if any harm to the environment from burning fossil fuel, this author's answer is no.

SOURCE 






Energy Independence Day: A Story of Shale and Sand

People over 50 remember the OPEC oil embargoes and Americans waiting in line to buy gasoline. We were the most powerful nation the world. We had won World War II, rebuilt Europe and Japan. Yet, here we were begging some faceless Middle Eastern Sheiks for a few gallons so we could get to work. It was both frustrating and humiliating.

The answers we got from our political leadership were pathetic. Yes, they authorized farmers to start making ethanol and gave tax credits to the big refineries to get them to blend it. Congress created a Department of Energy to look for new sources of energy. They came up with some interesting ideas, but most of them were far too expensive. Americans were told to slow down, dial back on the thermostat and buy more sweaters. In short, the days of affordable energy were over and we would just have to get used to it.

Adding insult to injury, we were told that it was our fault.

Without much help from the Department of Energy, some enterprising entrepreneurs began to explore the possibilities of unlocking enormous amounts of oil and gas trapped in shale formations deep in the earth. To accomplish this they would combine new technologies. The first involved vertically drilling up to a mile deep to reach the layer of shale. They next figured out how to turn the drill bits to drill horizontally into the shale formation. No small feat. The second was perfecting a somewhat proven process called hydraulic fracturing. By pumping water down the well at very high pressure, they could create tiny cracks in the shale allowing the oil and gas to be tapped. A key was to include sand with the water to hold those tiny fissures open when the water was pumped out. Not just any sand. It had to be extremely hard to withstand the enormous pressures. It also had to be spherical, unlike beach sand which is cubicle.  Rounded sand prevents plugging up the plumbing. Fortunately, the United States has some very large shale formations and significant reserves of that special sand.

At first our OPEC puppet masters, ignored this shale and sand revolution. But, a few years ago they began to take notice of the dramatic improvements in fracking technology. They also noticed the steady increase in U.S. domestic energy production. At the rate we were going, in a few years we might not need to buy their oil. They began to try to undercut American frackers in an attempt to bankrupt them. They opened their spigots and drove down the world price of oil. They also underwrote anti-fracking public relations efforts. The combination slowed growth, rig counts dropped but our production continued to climb.

It was a war. OPEC believed they could hold their breath longer than American frackers. They were wrong. I suspect that they were shocked to learn that efficient frackers in North Dakota and West Texas could make money on oil at less than $50 a barrel. Many of the OPEC members needed more than that to keep their governments afloat. It was a war that they could not win.

So, after two years of waging war on American fracking, on September 29, 2016 (Energy Independence Day) the once powerful international oil cartel surrendered. Although they didn’t announce it that way, it was on that day that OPEC decided to begin reducing their production, ceding market share to frackers. Oil prices began to rise. Their ability to dictate to the United States would be forever diminished. We will soon be energy independent. Congress changed the law and we began to export oil and gas again to eager buyers like China.

The frackers won the energy war. But, in a larger sense the war was won with good old American ingenuity. It was won with simple, basic things. As basic as shale and sand.

SOURCE 





Sound (and light) reasons to tilt at windmills

Two simple words were enough to put me firmly in the anti-turbine camp: shadow flicker. How innocent — even poetic — it sounds, until you bear witness. If you haven’t and are undecided, I urge you to go online and find a video. It’s not hard.

It’s not exactly a trade secret that a tall object planted between you and the sun is going to cast a shadow. To provide a sense of scale, Jim Feasel, in a recent letter to the editor, has memorably written of St. Joseph’s Church with the steeple as a fan blade. As I’m in the UK, I’d change that to Big Ben, though it’s bigger than that. So we’re talking major flicker.

If you haven’t gone online to see one of those videos yet, just start blinking your eyes as you’re reading this. Now keep blinking them, slowly and regularly, until it gets annoying. Doesn’t take long, does it?

Or wait until it’s dark, sit yourself comfortably down, and ask a less-than-loved-one to flip the light switch on and off all evening.

Or imagine you live in a fridge and someone keeps opening the door. This scenario hits particularly close to home, as growing up, it drove my dad crazy when I kept doing that to check if the food was still there.

I don’t think any of these illustrations quite capture the torture of what it must be like to have to put up with shadow flicker hour after hour, day after day. Curtains don’t help. Nothing helps, except fleeing to a windowless bunker. The only relief comes when the sun god Ra shifts the running shadow over your enemies, or you manage to sell your house to someone who remembers and loves disco.

There are also noise issues (search “wind turbine sound” on YouTube, or sit under a flight path near a busy airport for an approximation); safety issues, including the thrilling prospect of ice flung at great velocity; politicians-steamrolling-the-locals issues; a lot of birds and bats that are going to have an unhappy ending; and real questions about just how beneficial these things are going to be once you have a look at the numbers.

“Is it worth putting our neighbors in this position for $65?” asked the author of that letter I mentioned. “We should not do it for all the money in the world, much less $65. Shame on all of us if we do.”

Yes, the planet would appreciate more green energy. But such projects often seem more motivated by greenbacks in the right pockets than high ideals.

If I had any say in the matter I’d only put these less than benign giants in the back yards of anybody in a position to approve them or profit handsomely from them. Naturally, the biggest wind farm of all would be placed in a ring around Washington, D.C., so the rest of the country could bask in the bloviated megawatts thus generated.

SOURCE 






A Different War of Attrition

Steve Hayward’s recent Wall Street Journal opinion piece provides an important reminder of the life cycle of advocacy driven environmental issues and the importance of persistent, fact-based resistance to counter campaigns based on ideology and visions of impending catastrophes.

Going back to the 1960s, we have witnessed an unending series of apocalyptic threats created by ideologues who have tried to use them promote increased political control by entitled elites. In all cases running from the population bomb to the limits of growth, to the war on pesticides, and climate change over the last 30 years, the problem has always been activities promoting economic growth and the solution has always been a reduction in personal freedom, serious constraints on market-based progress, and increased control from the center. Federalism and the Constitutional based limited government are treated as quaint ideals that have long outlived their relevance.

Steve Hayward takes us through the five stages that climate change has passed through to go from the “center of public concern …into a prolonged limbo.” He bases his narrative on a 1972 article by Anthony Downs, Up and Down With Ecology.

The stated objectives of climate advocates have been to eliminate fossil fuels from the globe’s energy budget, to bring atmospheric CO2 levels down to pre-industrial levels, to promote wind and solar as substitutes for fossil fuels and reduce the carbon foot print of all. All of these objectives are championed as necessary to save the planet. The real objective has been increased political control of the economy by self-ordained elites. We should not forget that in the early 2000s, French President Jacque Chirac called for a world government. And, Christiana Figueres, the former Executive Secretary of UNFCCC, prior to the 2015 meeting in Paris bluntly stated “This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the industrial revolution. “

While some ideologues may have entertained the notion that decarbonization objectives could be achieved in a matter of a few decades, no one who understood how the world works could seriously believe that. Instead, advocate leaders championed lofty and unattainable goals recognizing that incremental progress was the real objective. And since the time of Kyoto, they have promoted actions that incrementally would reduce the role of carbon in the global economy. But over time the costs of forced decarbonization have become more apparent and as they have counter pressures has increased. Germany, the leading advocate for alternative energy, is rolling back its Energiewende in the face of growing emissions and costs and the US is undoing much of the Obama initiatives. Other nations, as evidenced by the Paris Accord, have moved from supporting binding targets and timetables to accepting a voluntary agreement that will be honored in the breach while they pursue economic growth and higher standards of living..

There are two major reasons why the march to global government and rapid decarbonization have stalled. First, the public has never ranked climate change as one of its top priorities. Nor has there been any indication that the public at large is willing to sacrifice the benefits that come from continued economic progress. Second, while those opposed to draconian climate change actions are relatively small in number and underfunded, they have been well focused and persistent in pointing out the flaws in the climate orthodoxy and the folly of mandated decarbonization. Climate advocates have imposed significant cost from their actions and policies but those costs are far less than they could have been. And, as Steve Hayward insightfully observed, “Treating climate change as planet scale problem that could be solved by an international regulatory scheme transformed the issue into a political creed for committed believers. Causes that live by politics, die by politics.”

SOURCE 





Being ‘green’ is easy, ignore facts

If you thought the “green movement” was more about self-righteous politics than clear-headed science, here are two tales that prove the point.

In Arizona a petition is being circulated in an effort to get on the ballot an initiative called the Clean Energy for a Healthy Arizona Amendment. This would require 50 percent of the electricity generated in the state to come from renewable sources by 2030.

The petition states: “The Amendment defines renewable energy sources to include solar, wind, small-scale hydropower, and other sources that are replaced rapidly by a natural, ongoing process (excluding nuclear or fossil fuel). Distributed renewable energy sources, like rooftop solar, must comprise at least 10% of utilities’ annual retail sales of electricity by 2030.”

To get on the November ballot petitioners must gather nearly 226,000 signatures by July 5.

If the measure passes it would necessitate the closure of the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station west of Phoenix, which currently provides about 35 percent of the state’s electricity, even though it produces no carbon emissions.

If the state were to achieve the goal of 50 percent of its power coming from mostly solar and wind, both of which are intermittent, there would be no room on the grid for Palo Verde’s power, because reactors can’t be quickly turned off and on — it takes weeks of preparation.

“We would have to shut Palo Verde down during the day every day,” one plant official was quoted as saying by Cronkite News. “But that’s not how nuclear plants really work. Nuclear plants can’t just be shut down and then started up again.”

The most likely source of rapid start-up generation would be natural gas, which produces carbon emissions, especially when frequently idling.

Adding wind and solar to the power grid could increase the carbon dioxide output.

Retired electrical engineer Kent Hawkins wrote in February 2010 that “the introduction of wind power into an electricity system increases the fossil fuel consumption and CO2 emissions beyond levels that would have occurred using efficient gas plants alone as the providers of electricity equivalent to the firmed wind.”

This is because every kilowatt-hour of intermittent electricity introduced into the grid must be backed up by a reliable fossil-fuel generator. When the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine, the demand for electricity remains.

Starting and stopping natural gas-fired generators is inefficient, comparable to operating a car in stop and go traffic instead of steady and efficient on the open highway. Just like the car, the fuel consumption can double, along with the carbon emissions, negating any presumed carbon savings by using solar or wind.

Opponents of the measure say it will drive up power bills in the state. Proponents argue long-term benefits of solar power and reducing nuclear waste offset any immediate cost spike.

Meanwhile, in New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has announced plans to build $6 billion worth of offshore wind turbines while shutting down the nuclear-powered, emission-free Indian Point Energy Center in Buchanan, N.Y.

Robert Bryce, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, explained in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal that the wind turbines will produce only 60 percent as much power as the nuclear plant being closed.

How will this gap be covered? You guessed it, natural gas.

“The irony here is colossal. Mr. Cuomo, who banned hydraulic fracturing despite the economic boon it has created in neighboring Pennsylvania, and who has repeatedly blocked construction of pipelines, is making New York even more dependent on natural gas, which will increase its carbon emissions,” Bryce writes. “At the same time, he has mandated offshore wind projects that will force New Yorkers to pay more for their electricity, even though the state already has some of the nation’s highest electricity prices.”

This past week NV Energy announced plans to contract to build six new solar power projects at a cost of $2 billion and double the state’s renewable energy capacity, but only if voters reject the Energy Choice Initiative on the November ballot that would end the company’s monopoly in most of the state and allow competition. No mention was made of how this might impact power bills.

In all three states emissions would likely increase, as well as power bills.

Being green is a state of mind. Just never let the facts get in the way.

SOURCE 

***************************************

For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  

Preserving the graphics:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here or here

*****************************************



Monday, June 25, 2018



James Hansen: Prez. Obama ‘failed miserably’ on climate – ‘Late, ineffectual & partisan'

At least Hansen is honest in revealing that all of the alternative energy solutions agreed to in Paris and elsewhere will have no measurable effect, and are just political posturing to placate a gullible constituency

James Hansen’s long list of culprits for this inertia are both familiar – the nefarious lobbying of the fossil fuel industry – and surprising. Jerry Brown, the progressive governor of California, and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, are “both pretending to be solving the problem” while being unambitious and shunning low-carbon nuclear power, Hansen argues.

James Hansen: ‘Promises like Paris don’t mean much, it’s wishful thinking. It’s a hoax that governments have played on us since the 1990s.’ 

There is particular scorn for Barack Obama. Hansen says in a scathing upcoming book that the former president “failed miserably” on climate change and oversaw policies that were “late, ineffectual and partisan”.

Hansen even accuses Obama of passing up the opportunity to thwart Donald Trump’s destruction of US climate action, by declining to settle a lawsuit the scientist, his granddaughter and 20 other young people are waging against the government, accusing it of unconstitutionally causing peril to their living environment.

“Near the end of his administration the US said it would reduce emissions 80% by 2050,” Hansen said.

SOURCE 





Antarctica Is Getting Taller, and Here’s Why

If you read the article below in full, you will see that this is all just guesswork

Bedrock under Antarctica is rising more swiftly than ever recorded — about 1.6 inches (41 millimeters) upward per year. And thinning ice in Antarctica may be responsible.

That's because as ice melts, its weight on the rock below lightens. And over time, when enormous quantities of ice have disappeared, the bedrock rises in response, pushed up by the flow of the viscous mantle below Earth's surface, scientists reported in a new study.

These uplifting findings are both bad news and good news for the frozen continent.

The good news is that the uplift of supporting bedrock could make the remaining ice sheets more stable. The bad news is that in recent years, the rising earth has probably skewed satellite measurements of ice loss, leading researchers to underestimate the rate of vanishing ice by as much as 10 percent, the scientists reported.

An incomplete picture

Interplay between bedrock and mantle in Antarctica is just one of the many geologic processes that happen all over our dynamic planet. Under Earth's crust cover, the molten mantle extends over 1,796 miles (2,890 kilometers) down to Earth's core. Mantle movement is known to ripple up and affect the crust's tectonic plates, as these plates ride convection currents in the mantle's outermost part, known as the lithosphere.

But while computer models give scientists an idea of how the mantle behaves, the picture is incomplete, lead study author Valentina Barletta, a postdoctoral researcher at DTU Space, the National Space Institute at the Technical University of Denmark, told Live Science.

"The study of this — the distribution of viscosity in the mantle — is still in its infancy," Barletta said. "We know where the Earth is hotter and cooler — more or less. However, the viscosity of the mantle depends not just on temperature, but also on water content." Estimating the temperature of the mantle in a given area could therefore give an inaccurate view of how fast-moving it is — a cooler patch with high water content could be just as viscous as a hotter zone that contained less water, Barletta explained.

Dramatic changes such as those that the researchers observed in Antarctica's bedrock — nudged upward by the mantle below — were thought to happen over thousands, or even tens of thousands, of years. Their new findings show that this shift in response to vanishing ice can take place much more rapidly, over centuries or decades. This suggests that the mantle under Antarctica, which is lifting the bedrock upward, may be more fluid, flowing more quickly than previously suspected, the study authors reported.

Measuring rebound

Antarctica's bedrock is difficult to study because most of it is covered by thick layers of ice; the continent's ice sheet cover holds about 90 percent of all the ice on Earth, containing enough water to elevate sea levels worldwide by about 200 feet (61 meters), according to NASA. To measure how it was changing, the researchers installed six GPS stations at locations around the Amundsen Sea Embayment (ASE), a region of the ice sheet roughly the size of Texas, that drains into the Amundsen Sea. They places the GPS monitors in places where bedrock was exposed, gathering data at a spatial resolution of 0.6 miles (1 km), higher than any recorded in prior studies.

The scientists expected to see some evidence of slow uplift in the bedrock over time, which could be linked to historic ice loss — because "when ice melts, the earth rebounds elastically," Barletta said. Instead, they saw that the rate of the uplift was about four times faster than anticipated from ice-loss data. The velocity of the rebound in the ASE — 1.6 inches (41 millimeters) per year — was "one of the fastest rates ever recorded in glaciated areas," study co-author Abbas Khan, an associate professor at DTU Space, said in a statement.

Their findings suggested that the mantle underneath is fast-moving and fluid, responding rapidly as the heavy weight of ice is removed to push the bedrock upward very quickly, Barletta said.

An uncertain future for Antarctica's ice

The bedrock uplift is a result of ice loss over the past century, but ice continues to vanish from parts of Antarctica at a dramatic rate, spurred by human-induced climate change. An estimated 3 trillion tons of ice have vanished from the continent since 1992, causing about 0.3 inches (around 8 mm) of sea level rise. And scientists recently predicted that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) could collapse entirely within the next 100 years, leading to sea level rise of up to nearly 10 feet (3 meters).

But the researchers suggest that there may be a ray of hope for the weakening WAIS. The deforming bedrock under Antarctica, buoyed by a fluid mantle, could provide an unexpected source of support for the WAIS, the scientists discovered. In fact, the bedrock's uplift could stabilize the WAIS enough to prevent a complete collapse, even under strong pressures from a warming world.

There's a downside to their findings, too. Estimates of ice loss in Antarctica depend on satellite measurements of gravity in localized areas, which can be affected by significant changes in mass. If the bedrock under Antarctica is rapidly adjusting in response to ice loss, its uplift would register in gravity measurements, compensating for some ice loss and obscuring just how much ice has truly disappeared by about 10 percent, according to the study.

Hopefully, now that scientists are aware of this discrepancy, it can be addressed in future models of disappearing ice, Barletta said.

SOURCE 
https://www.livescience.com/62885-earth-rising-under-





GOP Senators Accuse National Science Foundation Of Funding Climate 'Propaganda'

Four Republican senators this week demanded an investigation of the National Science Foundation’s grants, accusing the federal agency of “propagandizing” by supporting a program to encourage TV meteorologists to report on climate change.

In a letter sent to the agency’s inspector general Wednesday, the senators ― Ted Cruz (Texas), Rand Paul (Ky.) and James Lankford (Okla.) and Jim Inhofe (Okla.) ― said the $4 million Climate Matters program, which sponsors classes and webinars for meteorologists and provides real-time data and graphics with TV stations, went beyond the scope of the National Science Foundation’s mission of funding “basic research.” They urged the inspector general to probe whether the grants violated the 1939 Hatch Act, which bars government agencies from engaging in partisan activity.

“It is unacceptable for federal agencies to support such research which attempts to convince individuals to adopt a particular viewpoint rather than conducting objective research examining a given topic,” they wrote in the letter.

The call for an investigation came the same day NBC News published a feature on Climate Central’s efforts to train more than 500 TV weathercasters across the country on how to understand global warming and its local impacts. NBC News first reported on the letter.

In a lengthy statement to HuffPost, the NSF said its grants undergo a rigorous merit review process “considered to be the ‘gold standard’ of scientific review” and said its staff receives an annual ethics training that includes the Hatch Act.

“Nearly every proposal is evaluated by a minimum of three independent reviewers consisting of scientists, engineers and educators who do not work at NSF or for the institution that employs the proposing researchers,” Sarah Bates, an agency spokeswoman, said in the statement. “Each proposal submitted to NSF — including those deemed ‘troubling’ by Senators Paul, Cruz, Lankford and Inhofe ― is reviewed by science and engineering experts well-versed in their particular discipline or field of expertise.”

The NSF’s inspector general did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The senators cited a six-year-old opinion column in The Washington Post that described Climate Central, the group that runs the program with researchers at George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication, as “an advocacy group.” They called the NSF grants “egregious” and accused Climate Central of changing “the manner in which it describes itself, perhaps due to the attention it received from The Washington Post.”

“Research designed to sway individuals of a various group, be they meteorologists or engineers, to a politically contentious viewpoint is not science ― it is propagandizing,” the senators wrote.  Such efforts certainly fail to meet the standard of scientific research to which the NSF should be devoting federal taxpayer dollars.”

In reality, the Princeton, New Jersey-based nonprofit produces original research and deeply-reported feature stories. Climate Central operated a robust news site until last August, when it laid off most of its staff reporters to focus its resources on research.

“We are an independent organization and scrupulously avoid advocating for any policy or political position,” Climate Central CEO Ben Strauss, also the group’s chief scientist, wrote in an email Thursday.

He pointed out that the opinion column the senators cited was “not news reporting,” and that “it was soundly refuted at the time by then-CEO of Climate Central Paul Hanle in a letter to the editor.”

“Climate Central is not an advocacy organization, and the scientific consensus on climate change is not a political viewpoint,” he added.

The NSF funding covered less than a quarter of the Climate Matters budget over the last three years but provided a critical boost at a time when cable news’ failure to report on climate change is becoming a crisis unto itself. ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox aired a combined 260 minutes of climate change coverage last year, according to a February study released by liberal watchdog Media Matters for America.

Of that, 205 minutes, or 79 percent, focused on actions or statements by the Trump administration, most often the president’s decision to pull the United States out of the Paris climate accord. Nearly all coverage of climate change on the influential Sunday talk shows ― 94 of 95 minutes ― focused on the administration. At the same time, TV giant Sinclair Broadcast Group, criticized for requiring its local stations across the country to air right-wing political propaganda, is accused of forcing its meteorologists to insert climate denialism into their coverage.

In 2017, Climate Matters helped local weathercasters report on the impacts of climate change 879 times, covering 40 states and Puerto Rico.

“There have already been a few hundred stories so far in 2018,” Strauss said.

The Senators’ letter marks the latest high-profile Republican attack on federal funding to deal with climate change. Trump, who has repeatedly dismissed climate change as “a hoax,” purged federal websites of references to global warming and instructed the Environmental Protection Agency and Interior Department to eliminate regulations on greenhouse gas emissions and fossil fuel extraction in an effort to transform the country into the world’s leading oil and gas exporter. Republicans in Congress attempted to zero out funding for renewable energy subsidies in the GOP tax bill last year, despite including $25 billion in giveaways to the fossil fuel industry.

Even amid an ongoing avalanche of corruption scandals, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has proposed a series of new rules to dramatically scale back the few remaining Obama-era rules to reduce planet-warming emissions, and prohibit the use of most public health studies when writing regulations, a move widely panned as an “attack on science.”

The GOP remains the only major political party in the developed world to make climate change denial a platform issue.

The scientific consensus on climate change is not a political viewpoint. Climate Central CEO Ben Strauss

The senators who authored the letter are among the biggest recipients of fossil fuel donations. In a ranking of all U.S. senators over the last three decades, Cruz came in third for the all-time largest total of direct contributions from oil and gas companies, receiving over $2.7 million since he took office, including during his presidential campaign, according to data collected by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. Inhofe ― who infamously brought a snowball to the Senate floor as proof of climate scientists’ supposed folly ― ranked seventh, with nearly $1.9 million. Lankford ranked 16th, with $1.1 million. Paul fell well below the others at $284,328.

Likewise, all four senators reject the overwhelming scientific consensus that burning fossil fuels causes climate change, putting them at odds not only with nearly every credible scientist but the vast majority of Americans.

Ninety-seven percent of peer-reviewed research has concluded that burning fossil fuels, deforestation and industrial farming are enshrouding the planet in heat-trapping gases, while a research review published in 2015 found significant flaws in the methodologies, assumptions or analyses used by the 3 percent of scientists who concluded otherwise. Meanwhile, 69 percent of survey respondents know global warming is happening, and 52 percent understand humans are the main cause, according to 2016 survey data from Yale University’s Program on Climate Change Communication.

Yet just 39 percent believe climate change is causing harm right now, according to a George Mason survey from March of 1,278 adults.

Climate communications experts say TV meteorologists are best positioned to bridge that cognitive gap by localizing the broad planetary trends, said Ed Maibach, director of George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication, which partnered with Climate Central on Climate Matters.

“It’s important to share information with all Americans about the local impacts of climate change in their community,” Maibach, who has served as the principal investigator on all the NSF grants to fund Climate Matters, said in an email. “There is no better way to do that than through the local news.”

The program has yielded success. In 2010, only half of the 571 weathercasters George Mason surveyed believed global warming was happening, as NBC News reported, and a quarter called it “a scam.” A new survey taken last year showed that 95 percent of meteorologists believed the planet is warming.

Yet they remained divided on the cause. Just 15 percent said human activity is “largely or entirely” causing the climate to change, while 34 said it was mostly due to human activity. Twenty-one percent said natural events and human activity were equally to blame, and 13 percent said it was mostly due to natural events.

“NSF funding has helped us help TV weathercasters provide this important information to their viewers,” Maibach said. “And their viewers appreciate the information; hundreds of TV weathercasters have told us so.”

Climate communication has become a burgeoning field of study as scientists seek to better understand how people come to understand an environmental phenomenon of unprecedented proportions. The issue has the added challenge of overcoming years of misinformation spread by fossil fuel corporations, think tanks they funded and politicians who receive their patronage.

Climate denials efforts have managed to help politicize climate change even as fossil fuel emissions continue to rise and 2017 marked the most expensive year on record in damages from natural disasters linked to climate change.

On Thursday, an anonymous user with no previous submissions to Wikipedia updated Climate Central’s page to call it a “fake news” organization.

SOURCE 





Green Mafia Lynch An Innocent Bystander: CO2

I live in SE Queensland. Yesterday the surface air temperature rose from a frosty 36ºF at sunrise to a balmy 72ºF in mid-afternoon. The enormous heat needed to achieve this 36º of warming came via radiation from the sun.

Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere plays no significant part in this daily heating event – in fact, it may intercept a tiny proportion of the incoming solar radiation and re-radiate it in all directions, thus keeping the daytime surface temperature a tiny bit cooler than it would have been otherwise.

At the deep Mount Isa Mine in NW Queensland, the surface temperature may average about 77ºF but it increases by about 20ºF every 50 meters of depth – rock walls are red hot in places.

The enormous heat causing this comes via conduction from Earth’s geothermal heat plus some oxidation and heating of the sulfide ores as they come in contact with natural air containing oxygen. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere plays no part in this heating.

There are volcanic windows open right now in Hawaii, Japan and the Galapagos revealing the vast resources of volcanic geothermal heat which is always migrating towards the cooler surface, sometimes violently.

Temperatures vary greatly over Earth’s surface, making a mockery of attempts to calculate an “average” for the globe. Air surface temperature may be minus -22ºF at the South Pole, while at the same time it can be plus 86ºF at the Equator.

This enormous difference is caused by the varying intensity of solar radiation striking the surface – carbon dioxide in the atmosphere plays no significant part in creating this variance.

Surface air temperatures in big cities can be 9ºF hotter than surrounding rural land partly because bitumen roads, roofs, and runways heat up more than the grassy or forested countryside.

Mega-cities are also full of heat-producing humans, engines, trains, vehicles, air conditioners, heaters, stoves, fridges, pumps, and mowers.

Urban heat also comes from the warm bodies and hot exhalations from millions of humans digesting carbon-based foods, from stored chemical energy from burning hydrocarbons (wood, lignite, coal, oil, and gas) or from nuclear power.

Using green energy also adds to the urban heat. Wind towers and solar panels extract energy from wind and sun in the countryside and release it where most of the electricity is used, usually in cities and suburbs.

Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere plays no measurable part in producing these islands of urban heat.

Longer term, the Medieval Warm Era and the Little Ice Age were natural occurrences almost certainly triggered by solar cycles that activated undersea volcanic activity along Earth’s extensive mid-ocean trenches/ridges.

Human production of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere played zero part in these natural global warming and cooling episodes.

Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere varies annually with the seasons reaching a maximum in the South Hemisphere summer for two perfectly natural reasons.

First, the huge southern oceans expel carbon dioxide as the surface water warms with the return of the summer (like an opened bottle of soda water in the sun).

At the same time, it is turning to winter in the large northern hemisphere landmass where deciduous trees and forests are dropping their leaves, and crop residue is accumulating on cultivated lands.

As this dead plant material decomposes it recycles its CO2 to the atmosphere. And as winter grips these densely populated lands, humans are also burning wood, peat, cow dung, coal, oil, and gas to keep warm, releasing even more CO2.

Then as the sun-driven seasons change, the southern oceans cool again and much of this carbon dioxide returns to the sea from whence it came.

And the northern farms and forests grow faster in their summer, absorbing atmospheric carbon dioxide and solar energy to produce food and lumber.

This annual fluctuation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a result, not a cause, of the seasonal temperature changes.

What happens in the seasonal weather cycle also occurs as a result of longer climate cycles of cooling and warming.

The ice core records show that the changes in global temperatures precede by about 800 years any changes to the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

This is probably a result of large slow overturning in the oceans as global temperatures change in response to cycles of solar energy and earth volcanism.

Despite all of this evidence of natural changes in Earth’s temperature, man’s production of invisible life-supporting carbon dioxide is being slandered daily with words like “dirty” “black”, “polluting” “heat causing”.

And those who point to dissenting evidence are called “deniers”, “shills” and worse, and gagged by intimidation lawsuits and media silence.

Billions of dollars are also being spent on a propaganda storm of anti-carbon scare stories, Papal proclamations, cunning calculations, doctored data, and poignant pictures about polar bears, penguins, koalas, super-storms, social costs, floods, fires, mega-droughts, heat waves, and blizzards, all supposedly impacted by rising atmospheric carbon dioxide.

With just 0.04% in the atmosphere, to create such havoc carbon dioxide must be the most powerful super-gas ever imagined by the alarmists.

The green mafia is trying to lynch an innocent victim – the gas of life, carbon dioxide.

They would be better served by focusing on real pollution of air, land, and water caused by their own well-traveled, air-conditioned, electronic, fast-food, throw-away, tax-supported lifestyle.

If they fear carbon dioxide so much, they should stop exhaling.

We need more light and less heat in the climate debate.

SOURCE 




This energy hex Australian governments place on all Australians is madness

If our worst enemies abroad were given one evil wish to destroy our economy they probably would look to curse perhaps our greatest natural advantage: access to almost unlimited cheap energy.

Yet, as if to prove that fact is stranger than even this madcap fiction, this is a hex we are visiting upon ourselves.

If a prosperous nation decided to burden its people with expensive and unreliable power, imposing hardships including job losses, costs on struggling families, reduced profits and missed investment opportunities, to create a more benign environment for all the people of the world, it would be truly altruistic. But if it were inflicting pain on its citizens and handicapping future generations for no discernible benefit, then it would be an act of sheer madness.

Yet here we are. We are in a self-imposed energy crisis. No one disputes the urgency — Coalition and Labor politicians, state and federal, agree prices are too high; they are spending on diesel generators, large-scale batteries and stored hydro to find a way through; companies are having power cut or being paid to reduce demand; consumers and industries fear dire consequences; regulators sound alarms about lack of supply; and policymakers float a raft of possible solutions.

Yet it is all our doing. By mandating renewable energy targets, committing to global carbon dioxide emissions-reduction goals, subsidising wind and solar generation including by domestic consumers, toying with emissions trading schemes and imposing (for a time) a carbon tax, we have up-ended our electricity market, forced out some of the cheapest and most reliable generation and made our power more expensive and less reliable. The lion’s share of investment across a decade — upwards of $30 billion — has gone into the sure bet of subsidised renewable energy that has a guaranteed market but that cannot be relied on to meet peak energy output at any given time. Billions more have been spent on government payments and grants. All this money is recouped in the end from consumers, who are paying enormous sums to go backwards.

Since 1999, average spot prices per megawatt hour have leapt from $50 to $110 in South Australia and from less than $25 in NSW and Victoria to $80 and $95 respectively. Electricity costs for manufacturers have increased 79 per cent since 2010 and in that period there have been net job losses of about 140,000 in the sector. Price rises have squeezed family budgets, created hardship for pensioners and forced companies to cut jobs or shut down.

South Australia was plunged into darkness for hours and the Australian Energy Market Operator has warned that without remedial action, even in NSW where cheap and reliable coal-fired power has been abundant, there will be supply vulnerability in the coming years that could lead to 200,000 homes going without power during peak summer demand. The closure of NSW’s Liddell coal-fired power station in a few years will make the situation worse.

This month AEMO warned again that the “unprecedented transformation” of our electricity system means Australia “does not have the energy reserves it once had to lean on” when we need it. This is deplorable.

We are the world’s largest coal exporter. We will soon be the largest exporter of liquefied natural gas. We are the third largest exporter of uranium.

Australia powers the economic and manufacturing powerhouses of northeast Asia, and other parts of the world, with cost-effective and reliable energy supplies. But we decline to do the same for ­ourselves.

We may as well feed the people of the world with our wheat and sheep exports while our own people go hungry. Why are we doing this to ourselves? Politicians from both major parties and the Greens pretend — surely they are feigning because they must know the facts — that this is our contribution to global efforts to combat global warming. This is fraudulent.

We need to do what the climate activists constantly implore of us: back the science. All the facts tell us that, scientifically, Australia’s climate action is doing nothing to improve the global environment. We are putting ourselves through extended economic pain, with deep social consequences, for nothing more than climate gestures. This is the hard edge of gesture politics: national virtue-signalling, with the poorest citizens and jobless paying the highest price.

Don’t take my word for it; listen to Chief Scientist Alan Finkel, who the government tasked with revising policy. He confirmed before a Senate estimates committee hearing a year ago that Australia’s carbon emissions amounted to 1.3 per cent of the global total (that proportion is shrinking as world emissions grow). Finkel was asked what difference it would make to climate change if all of our nation’s emissions were cut — pretend 25 million of us left Australia idle — so that world emissions dropped by 1.3 per cent. “Virtually nothing,” was his reply.

But wait. Our contribution is much less significant even than “virtually nothing” because we will not eliminate all our emissions. We aim to reduce them by 26 per cent — so our best impact may be a quarter of virtually nothing. Wait again; we become even more irrelevant. Global emissions are on the rise. Led by China (growing by up to 4 per cent so far this year) world CO2 emissions are increasing at close to 2 per cent. So, more science, more facts. China’s annual emissions are about 30 times higher than ours and in any given year the increase alone in China’s emissions can be more than double what we plan to cut by 2030. While global emissions rise our piddling cuts do zip. We are emitting into the wind. Our price rises, blackouts, job losses, investment droughts, subsidies and energy system dilemmas are all for nothing.

Anyone with a pulse must understand this. Why they persist with proposing or backing costly climate policies is the question. They want to display their commitment to the cause. They want to associate themselves with protecting the planet. It is earth motherhood, dictated by political fashion and a reluctance to go against the zeitgeist. What a sad indictment on our political/media class — indulging its progressive credentials for social and diplomatic acceptance at the expense of struggling families, jobless blue-collar workers and our economic competitiveness.

The Coalition is starting to tear itself apart again; led by Tony Abbott, those who understand mainstream concerns are rising up against those stuck in commercial, media and political orthodoxy. Malcolm Turnbull and Josh Frydenberg’s national energy guarantee is a retrofit mechanism to encourage some investment in dispatchable electricity.

As they negotiate for a bipartisan position they could be left with a stark choice: satisfy Labor and its premiers or placate the Coalition partyroom. It may be impossible to do both — the partyroom may at least demand a plan to extend the life of Liddell — and another political short-circuit may be in the offing.

The national energy system is so badly distorted by a decade of renewable subsidies and the threat of future carbon prices that there is no easy solution. All sides of the debate propose expensive government interventions. Investors in anything but renewables are wary.

If we had done nothing on climate action we might have had plentiful and cheap coal and gas power on the back of private investment. But we killed that goose. There is bound to be a reckoning; eventually we will reclaim the energy advantage we export to other nations. And if we ever need a zero-emissions future, we will embrace the silver bullet of nuclear energy. The only question is whether it takes us three years or three decades to come to our senses — and how many political careers will be hoist with this petard in the interim.

SOURCE 

***************************************

For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  

Preserving the graphics:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here or here

*****************************************